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All at once, he had ten dollars.
Qin Siyu laid out dinner for the family, then took his younger cousin, whom he treated as a sister, to have her hair permed.
Her name was Lin Suyu, and she was one of his maternal uncle’s children. She had been born here, because hardly anyone would spend American dollars bringing a girl over. Each time a Chinese man with legal status returned from China, he would report upon coming back that his wife was pregnant, then announce sometime later that a son had been born. Eventually he could sell that son’s place to someone else, allowing the buyer to enter the United States under the boy’s identity. On paper, it looked as though everyone was forever having sons.
It was possible for grown women to come over, though that, too, was rare. They had to be capable and able to earn money. As the saying went, "Chinatown doesn’t support idlers."
Suyu had been in a terrible mood lately, so Qin Siyu took her to have her hair permed.
She had never had a perm and had always wanted curls like the actress Ann Sheridan.
He had heard that Wella now made a new kind of permanent-wave machine. Women no longer had to endure terrifying red-hot curling irons, so he spent the money.
His sister was clearly delighted.
After her hair was done, Qin Siyu bought his younger cousin a kerosene lamp with a pink shade.
During the Roaring Twenties, most households in San Francisco had begun to be electrified and use electric lighting; some even had washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Qin Siyu’s family, however, still used a kerosene lamp. Electrification was simply beyond their reach.
They had once taken on enormous debts to arrange paper-son identities for the whole family.
Back then the going price was a hundred dollars per year of age. He had been only two, so he cost just two hundred, but his father and aunt by marriage had each cost thousands. His father had been thirty, which meant three thousand dollars; his aunt had been thirty-three, which meant thirty-three hundred. Only three years earlier had their family finally paid off all its debts and begun living a normal life.
Who could have known that scarcely any time would pass before that "normal" life was swept away by the crash?
Even though it was only a kerosene lamp, the shade was pink. Suyu was overjoyed all over again.
Now the whole room could be pink!
With her curled hair in her pink room, she looked like a princess.
Qin Siyu carefully saved the few dollars that remained.
When they returned home, the entire family enjoyed a hearty meal.
They could taste the long-missed richness of oil and meat in every mouthful.
Over dinner, his mother, Lin Xiangmei, brought up Liu Changchun.
The Summer Olympics had been held in Los Angeles that year, and China had sent a competitor for the first time, Liu Changchun, a runner nicknamed "Flying Legs." He had sailed from Shanghai for three weeks to reach America, arriving exhausted. He competed in two events but finished last in his heats and did not advance. Afterward he did not even have the money for the trip back to China. His fellow Chinese in Chinatown had pooled enough money to send him home.
Lin Xiangmei looked disappointed. "When will China win an Olympic medal? When will we appear in the medal rankings, even at the very bottom?"
His father, Qin Sanfu, said, "In your dreams!"
Qin Sanfu was not especially interested in Liu Changchun. As usual, someone else’s good fortune caught his attention. "Hey, I heard about a fellow arranging paper sons. I think his surname is Wu, though I’m not sure which Wu. He’s saved up tens of thousands! What nerve! Brought in more than ten people in two years."
Lin Xiangmei was disgusted. "I’ve heard of him. Not long ago there was a girl who couldn’t repay her debt, and he tried to force her into prostitution! She only wanted to earn some money. How could he do something like that?"
Qin Siyu paused at this. "She didn’t go through with it, did she?"
"No," Lin Xiangmei said. "She went back to China."
Qin Siyu lowered his eyes.
Because of the labor trade, and still more because of the Page Act of 1875, which specifically targeted Chinese people, followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the ratio of Chinese men to women in America had been nineteen to one in 1860 and had risen to twenty-seven to one by 1890. Countless girls were kidnapped, tricked, or trafficked into brothels. Sometimes their own families in China sold them when they were little, often because their parents had believed the traffickers’ honeyed promises. These girls, treated as merchandise, were generally shipped to San Francisco. Some were only a few years old and sold as mui tsai, to be raised by their buyers. They became prostitutes and sexual slaves, forced to sign "agreements," subjected to control, coercion, and brutal abuse. Some died mysteriously inside the brothels; others, ravaged by sexually transmitted diseases, died young in the streets. The money they "earned" never belonged to them.
Many of these girls resisted or escaped, but their captors even hired security men to hunt them down. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association was said to have tried to stamp out the trade without success. The business was controlled by the various associations and tongs.
Over the decades, the police increased their efforts against the trade, sometimes targeting the women themselves. Mission groups, including the Presbyterian Mission Home, continued rescuing these mui tsai, teaching them skills and helping them find work and build lives. Gradually, conditions improved somewhat.
After the great earthquake of 1906, Chinatown was reduced to ruins. White residents had long coveted this "prime land," and city officials wanted to move Chinatown elsewhere. But the Chinese community and the Qing government opposed the plan, both locally and abroad. After prolonged debate, rebuilding finally began on the original site. Chinese leaders hoped to improve their community’s image and reduce hostility. The new Chinatown’s buildings were orderly and distinctly Oriental in style, and the brothels disappeared from plain sight.
A new generation gradually grew up and the gender imbalance diminished, though the ratio still stood at four men to every woman. The crimes against women had not vanished. They merely persisted in dark corners where few people could see them, and perhaps they never would disappear entirely.
Qin Sanfu changed the subject again. "And Old Chu… I hear he played fan-tan at the gambling house last month and won two thousand in one night!"
Qin Siyu gave him another look. "Don’t start copying them."
"Oh, I know, I know," Qin Sanfu replied. "You’re so fierce."
After the earthquake, the opium dens had mostly disappeared and gambling houses had been cleared from public view. Everything in Chinatown seemed to have entered a new chapter, yet tales of people making fortunes through such schemes still cropped up from time to time.
"So," Qin Siyu asked, "if things keep getting worse, will we go back to China? It doesn’t seem possible to make money here anymore."
Both his parents fell silent. "…"
Every year seemed the worst year of the Depression yet, and this one had become unbearable. At first, people had not fully grasped what was happening, but by 1931 and 1932 it was impossible to ignore. The Chinese restaurant where his parents had worked had closed several months ago, and neither had found another job.
But their family had lived in Chinatown for a full fifteen years.
Naturally, his parents could not bear to give that up. Qin Sanfu said, "Things will get better. I hear another man called Roosevelt is running for president now, someone from the Roosevelt family. A distant younger relative of Theodore Roosevelt! Maybe he can save the economy. And life back home isn’t easy, either. Let’s save up some money and go back to Guangdong in a few years. We’re almost fifty, but we can still work a few more years… Then we can return to Guangdong in style!"
"…Oh," Qin Siyu said.
The Chinese people here were forever saying, "When I go back to China someday…" or "When I reach Hong Kong someday…" He had long since grown used to it.
And, of course, many people really had made it back.
Forget it, he thought. No use dwelling on it. Better to hold on for now. They really had not reached that point yet.
He already had a job, didn’t he? Cutting asparagus at a restaurant.
Fifteen cents an hour. That was a pretty good job, actually.
What was there to shrink from?
Finding work wasn’t all that difficult.
He carried his bowl and chopsticks into the kitchen. "I’m going to bed early tonight. I have to cut asparagus again tomorrow."
Lin Xiangmei was concerned. "All right. Don’t exhaust yourself, either."
"Mm," Qin Siyu said.
* * *
After an entire month of cutting asparagus, school began. Qin Siyu was a first-year student at Berkeley.
He had attended an "Oriental school" for both elementary and middle school.
After the affair involving Mamie, the government had established a "Chinese school," the Chinese Primary School. Mamie’s parents had been adamant that their child should be educated. They sued the school and the San Francisco Board of Education, and some conscientious lawyers and judges supported them. The California Supreme Court eventually ruled in their favor. So, rather than let Chinese pupils into public schools, the superintendent of San Francisco’s school board hastily opened a "Chinese school." Following the anti-Japanese controversy of 1906, it was renamed the Oriental Public School, and Japanese and Korean children were required to attend as well.
After graduating from the Oriental school, Qin Siyu attended Lowell High School, a public high school, and this year he had been admitted to Berkeley.
He hoped to attend medical school afterward. But medical school was expensive, and he needed to save money.
He would have to save desperately over the next two years.
One day, a few weeks after school started, Qin Siyu went to South Hall to visit a professor he had known for some time.
They had met entirely by chance. He had once done odd jobs at a Chinese Cantonese opera theater, and the professor had attended several performances. That was how they got to know each other. The professor had always encouraged him to learn, lending him books every month and explaining anything he could not understand. He had done this for years.
The professor taught economics. The books he lent Qin Siyu covered everything from economics and finance to society and much else besides.
To his astonishment, when Qin Siyu entered the office this time, he discovered that the owner of the watch from the beach was there, too!
Were they actually at the same school?
Did that man also go to Berkeley?
Qin Siyu came to see Professor Brown often, yet this was the first time he had encountered the young man. If he had seen him before, there was no way he would have forgotten.
When Qin Siyu entered the office, the person sitting opposite Professor Brown turned his face slightly, and their eyes met.
His blond hair appeared a little neater. He still looked distinguished, but distant and aloof.
Clearly, the other man recognized Qin Siyu as well. They looked silently into each other’s eyes, seeming to assess one another, or perhaps to engage in a brief standoff.
"Sean," Professor Brown said, "I’ve still got something to finish. Would you mind waiting a little while?"
Qin Siyu looked away. "Of course not. Take your time. I’m in no hurry."
He stood to one side with the cage in his hand, observing them quietly.
The young man really did not seem like an ordinary person. He had a certain quality Qin Siyu had never encountered before.
Was it the bearing of someone from high society?
He seemed to be Professor Brown’s student. His surname was Aston, which explained the A.
Qin Siyu noticed something unusual about Aston’s English.
It was unhurried and carried a Transatlantic accent.
The accent lay between British and American English. The R was non-rhotic, closer to British pronunciation, and a number of other sounds were unusual as well, including the "wh" combination.
Qin Siyu had heard actors speaking that way in films. Imitating a Transatlantic accent was fashionable in Hollywood. He had always thought those performances sounded slightly strange, and now he understood why: the imitations were too stiff. It was difficult to reproduce the accent. Aston spoke it naturally, beautifully, with a smooth, easy elegance, the result of private tutors teaching him from childhood and more than a decade spent speaking that way in his own circle.
Qin Siyu waited for a while.
The two men were discussing some of Roosevelt’s proposals and certain policies of the current president, Hoover. They analyzed their merits and shortcomings, predicted what might come next, and talked about writing an academic paper. Convinced that Roosevelt would be elected, they had already begun debating the strengths and weaknesses of his promises.
Qin Siyu, naturally, also knew what had happened over the summer.
Some twenty thousand impoverished veterans of the First World War had erected tents near Congress in Washington and camped there for two months, demanding that the government pay their bonuses several years early. The House passed the proposal, but the Senate, under pressure from Hoover, did not. President Hoover took a hard line. In late July he ordered the police to supervise their removal from the buildings. At first everything seemed to proceed smoothly, but the situation abruptly changed that afternoon. Fighting broke out, some people attacked the police with bricks, and the police chief who sympathized with the veterans was injured. The clash escalated instantly. Two servicemen were killed and twelve police officers injured. That afternoon Hoover ordered the encampment suppressed and cleared. MacArthur carried out the order resolutely, pursuing the veterans across the bridge despite instructions not to. Bayonets and large amounts of tear gas were used during the clearance, and a baby died in hospital after inhaling too much gas.
Veterans had shed their blood in Washington. After that, Hoover’s position had grown precarious.
When the two finally finished their discussion, Qin Siyu came forward again with his cage.
Professor Brown gestured toward him by way of introduction. "This is Sean Chin, a first-year student here and a friend of mine. He often borrows books from me and comes to ask questions when there’s something he doesn’t understand."
Brown passed seven or eight books from the desk to Qin Siyu. "Here, the ones you said you wanted to read last time."
Qin Siyu accepted them. "Thank you."
The book on top was a finance textbook.
Aston’s gaze traveled back up to Qin Siyu’s face.
Qin Siyu looked back at him.
Blue as the sea.
Qin Siyu had never seen eyes of such pure blue, without the slightest trace of gray.
After a moment, Aston’s gaze shifted toward the cage, now completely concealed beneath a piece of black cloth.
He gave no outward sign of it, but he was probably curious about what was inside.
Professor Brown explained, "A professor in biology needs these for his research. None of the other teachers or students were willing or able to complete the task, so the project couldn’t move forward. He asked around, and Qin Siyu said he was willing and could manage it, so I introduced him. He earns a little money from it every month now. Besides, he wants to go to medical school after graduating. Doing work for the biology faculty will help him build his credentials."
"Professor Watson doesn’t seem to be in his office," Qin Siyu said. "So I brought them here first."
Professor Brown asked, "Where are you planning to go afterward?"
"I suppose I’ll have to take them back to the dormitory. I was going to go to the library."
"Just leave them here with me," Professor Brown said. "Come and pick them up this afternoon."
"Mm-hm. That would be wonderful. Thank you, Professor."
Neither of them had said what was actually in the cage.
Aston was, after all, only in his second year. However mature and composed he might be, he surely still had some curiosity left.
Qin Siyu looked at him and suddenly remembered the expression he had worn on the beach: courteous, yet arrogant. An impulse to tease him arose. He lifted the cage, held it up right beneath Aston’s eyes, and asked, "Want to know what’s inside?"
Aston’s gaze slowly traveled from the cage to Qin Siyu’s face.
Qin Siyu lifted the cage between them to block Aston’s view and, with a sudden swish, yanked away the cloth covering it!
Cockroaches!!
The cage was full of cockroaches!!!
So many of them. Some even had their antennae sticking out through the bars.
Aston probably had never seen anything like it, but some instinct deep in his human genes prompted him to retreat two elegant steps at once. He stared at the insects, and even his breathing stopped for a moment.
Qin Siyu curled his lips into a smile. "Cockroaches. Every month I bring cockroaches to Professor Watson for research. He’s an entomologist."
Aston slowly looked up at his face again.
He abruptly asked, "What did you use to catch them?"
"???" Qin Siyu stared.
What a curious little baby.
Qin Siyu put down the cage and stepped forward twice. He thought he would probably never see this rich young gentleman again, anyway, so he actually reached out and hooked one fingertip beneath that exquisite chin. "My bare hands," he said, making it up.
Sure enough, Aston took another two steps backward.
Perhaps because of the word "cockroaches," he was suddenly acutely aware of the spot on his jaw where Qin Siyu had just touched him.
It tingled.
"Sean!" Professor Brown called, disapproving. "Don’t make things up."
Qin Siyu lowered his lashes. "…Sorry."
Aston looked relieved.
After leaving the cage with Brown, Qin Siyu and Aston walked out of the office together.
Male and female students alike seemed to recognize Aston. All along the way, they kept turning to stare, their eyes fixed on him.
The two of them walked side by side without really saying anything.
During the Depression, higher education had been affected less than most other sectors, especially public universities, but some students were still withdrawing.
Several young men and women were leaving the campus with their luggage just then.
A girl dragging a suitcase walked silently past them. Qin Siyu glanced at her and saw that she was moving as though numb, with tears streaming down her face. Her expression was utterly blank, yet the tears were pouring from her eyes.
Universities still admitted very few women in those days. Public universities in the West were already among the friendliest; private colleges in the East continued to exclude them.
As a woman who had managed to attend Berkeley, one of the best universities in the world, she must once have been filled with lofty, magnificent ambitions. Now she was withdrawing.
What did her future hold?
Would she marry and become a housewife? Or enter the field she had once dreamed of, only to work as some man’s secretary?
Qin Siyu felt a wave of sorrow.
There were so many people like her.
"Only two or three years," Aston sighed almost unconsciously. "Who could have imagined two or three years ago that this country would come to this?"
The Depression had lasted three years, and the stock market had lost ninety percent of its value.
In economics, the crash remained something of a riddle. Even now, no one could explain the disaster that had descended upon Wall Street in October 1929.
Many papers had been written, and many possible explanations proposed. Had it been because so many countries had moved from the gold standard to the silver standard? Had banks lent too freely, leaving their reserves dangerously depleted? Had too many businesses exaggerated their finances and inflated vast bubbles? Had it been Wall Street’s petty scheming and self-enrichment? Or had ordinary people’s personal spending become too highly leveraged, burdening them with too much debt?
"Who could have imagined it?" Qin Siyu looked over at him. "What if I told you I’d seen it coming? Would you believe me?"
Aston said nothing.
"We Chinese have an old saying," Qin Siyu went on. "When things reach their extreme, they turn into their opposite. At the height of prosperity begins decline. We all kneel at Time’s feet. The warning sign of destruction is prosperity itself."
Aston looked at him again.
"And besides," Qin Siyu said, as a gust of wind swept toward them. He raised his right hand slightly, letting the breeze flow over his fingertips. "’Prosperity’? Whose prosperity was it? We at the bottom never really felt any of it. We live somewhere between men and mice, and we’ve never been able to afford what’s produced. Overproduction simply means there weren’t enough people who could buy those goods to sustain endless ‘prosperity.’ So much of it was an illusion."
Aston’s ice-blue eyes rested on him.
"You know," Qin Siyu said with a smile, his black hair stirring in the wind, "this country had already fallen apart long before the crash."